Romney: “I saw my father march with MLK”

As you probably know by now, Mitt Romney said "I saw my father march with Martin Luther King." It seems that what Romney means by that isn’t what you and I mean. Let’s break the sentence down and see how Mitt Romney parses it:

I saw …

Romney explains what he means by "I saw":

“If you look at the literature, if you look at the dictionary, the term ‘saw’ includes being aware of in the sense I’ve described,” he said. “It’s a figure of speech and very familiar and it’s very common and I saw my dad march with Martin Luther King. I did not see it with my own eyes but I saw him in the sense of being aware of his participation in that great effort.”

Ahh. That’s clear. So not "I saw" in the sense of seeing it actually happen but in the sense of being aware that it happened. So Romney was aware of his:

… my father march with Martin Luther King

So what does "with MLK" mean? According the Boston Phoenix:

Fehrnstrom had originally told the Phoenix that the two men marched together in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, either in June 1963 or March 1968, a claim the Phoenix called into question earlier today. An additional source, William LeFevre of the Reuther Library at Wayne State University, who is in charge of the papers of the Grosse Pointe Civil Liberties Association, has since confirmed to the Phoenix that George Romney was not at the 1968 event, and that King was not at the 1963 event.

Fehrnstrom now says that the event in question was King’s “Freedom March” in Detroit on June 23, 1963. …

However, numerous contemporaneous and historical accounts say that Romney did not participate in the Detroit Freedom March, because it was held on the Sabbath. The New York Times, for example, wrote the next day that “Gov. George Romney, who is Mormon and does not make public appearances on Sundays, issued a special proclamation.”

So it seems that when Romney said "I saw my father march with Martin Luther King" he means that he was aware that his father participated in a civil rights marches that were supported with Martin Luther King.

The dude clearly doesn’t know what the definition of "is" is. So he just makes stuff up.